Speculation simmered yesterday over a possible trip by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to North Korea to resolve a feud over kidnapped Japanese, but officials said more groundwork was needed before any visit could be made.
A breakthrough in the dispute over the abductees, an emotive topic in Japan, would clear the way for talks on establishing diplomatic ties between the two countries and would be a political coup for Koizumi ahead of a July Upper House election.
"A visit by the prime minister is our best card. I hope any decision on it will be made carefully," said ruling Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Shinzo Abe.
"It's important that there's a clear outlook that the abduction issue will be solved," he told a news conference.
Koizumi's popularity ratings shot up after he met Kim Jong-il in September 2002, when the North Korean leader admitted to the kidnapping of 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies.
Five of those abductees came home to Japan, a quarter century after being snatched away. But they had to leave behind their North Korean-born children -- now teenagers and adults -- and one American spouse. Pyongyang has said the other eight had died from illness, accidents or suicide.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiro-yuki Hosoda told a separate news conference that several issues needed to be sorted out before Koi-zumi could travel to Pyongyang to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in what would be the second summit between the two.
"Please think of it as a completely clean slate," Hosoda told reporters when asked about reports that North Korea had proposed a Koizumi visit at last week's bilateral talks.
Koizumi was also coy. "Media reports seem to be saying various things but there is nothing I can say at this point," Kyodo news agency quoted him as telling reporters.
On Sunday, the Nihon Keizai business newspaper said the premier had told Foreign Ministry officials to start preparations for a possible trip to Pyongyang.
The Nihon Keizai said Koizumi could make a visit once Pyongyang promised that family members of Japanese abductees who are still in the North could be reunited with relatives in Japan.
In return, Tokyo would provide humanitarian aid for the North's struggling economy, the paper added.
Top spokesman Hosoda noted, however, that besides bilateral issues, the thorny matter of North Korea's nuclear programme had yet to be solved.
Delegates from the two Ko-reas, China, Japan, Russia and the US are to meet in Beijing tomorrow for working level talks on the nuclear standoff. Two-way talks between North Korean and Japanese officials could take place on the sidelines.
Families of the returned abductees want Koizumi to make the trip and bring their relatives home, but those whose loved ones are said to be dead or missing worry that this might close the door to finding out the truth about their fates, Japanese media said.
Besides the seven North Korean-born children, Japan also wants the husband of one abductee, Charles Jenkins, a US soldier said by Washington to have defected to the North, to be allowed to join his wife in Japan.
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